Machine learning applications

Five innovations that will change our lives within five years

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Machine learning will enable cognitive systems to learn, reason and engage with us in a more natural and personalized way. These systems will get smarter and more customized through interactions with data, devices and people. They will help us take on what may have been seen as unsolvable problems by using all the information that surrounds us and bringing the right insight or suggestion to our fingertips right when it's most needed. Over the next five years, machine learning applications will lead to new breakthroughs that will amplify human abilities, assist us in making good choices, look out for us and help us navigate our world in powerful new ways.

The classroom will learn you

The classroom of the future will learn about each student over the course of their education, helping students master the skills critical to meeting their goals. A system fueled by sophisticated analytics over the cloud will help teachers predict students who are most at risk, their roadblocks, and then suggest measures to help students overcome their challenges.

Buying local will beat online

Buying local will be back in style once again. Savvy retailers will use the immediacy of the physical store and proximity to customers to create experiences that cannot be replicated by online-only retail. They will magnify the digital experience by bringing the web right to where the shopper can physically touch it.

Doctors will routinely use your DNA to keep you well

Computers will help doctors understand how a tumor affects a patient down to their DNA, and present a collective set of medications shown to best attack the cancer, while reducing the time it takes to find the right treatment for a patient from weeks and months to days and minutes.

A digital guardian will protect you online

Security is going to become more agile and contextual based on a 360 degree of an individual's data, devices and applications. A digital guardian will have your back, trained to focus on the people and items it is entrusted with, so it can make inferences about what's normal or reasonable activity and what's not, ready to spot deviations that could be precursors to an attack and a stolen identity.

The city will help you live in it

Smarter cities will become sentient cities, understanding in real time how billions of events occur as computers learn to understand what people need, what they like, what they do, and how they move from place to place. Mobile devices and social engagement will enable citizens to strike up a relationship with their city leaders so their voices will be heard not only on election day, but every day.